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National Service Blog

Individuals experiencing long-term homelessness also often suffer from medical fragility caused or aggravated by life on the streets and in shelters. Lacking stable access to housing and preventative health care services, they become “high-utilizers” of costly inpatient and emergency care.

The Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH) advances high-quality solutions and cost-effective programs to improve the lives of the most vulnerable people in our society by supporting locally-based organizations that provide access to public resources that enable the chronically homeless to connect to homes, health care, and the community. As a Social Innovation Fund (SIF) intermediary, CSH is leading a project that integrates health care and housing for individuals with multiple, chronic health conditions who experience homelessness.

These individuals often fall into the gaps between systems of care. A shelter provider and a hospital, for example, seek to meet different needs of an individual. The shelter may overlook or be unable to help the individual with health problems, making it harder for him to find and keep stable housing. The hospital, in turn, may overlook non-medical factors such as housing instability that could make its treatment plans for a patient less effective.

CSH bridges these gaps by integrating supportive housing – affordable housing and comprehensive services – with special emphasis on health services to improve access and outcomes while lowering costs for public systems such as Medicaid.

David Pickens is a native of Fayetteville, North Carolina, where he graduated from Reid Ross Senior High School. There he played football and was a two-time all-conference defensive lineman. He was also a member of ROTC and marched in the "Cumberland Rifles" drill team. He spent his first year of college at Fayetteville State University playing football before transferring to North Carolina A&T State University. While at A&T he participated in ROTC, the "Aggie Rifles" drill team, and joined the U.S Army Reserves.

Having been a part of organized baseball since an early age, the concept of teamwork has been a part of my life for a very long time. I’ve seen firsthand the power of a unified group and how together a group can accomplish great things and succeed despite any obstacles. I also have seen how counter productive, and sometimes destructive, disunity can be to a common goal.
One early Saturday morning in May, members of my team, the Chicago White Sox, again reminded me of how together there is nothing we, as active members of our communities, cannot accomplish.

One student said that this was her first time doing community service. Another said that others had helped her throughout her life and this was the first time she could return the favor. More students said that random people who saw their service stopped and thanked them for their work.

The US Department of Health and Human Services partnered with Safe Shores on a back to school supply drive and flu educational event forDC area youth who have been the victims of or witnesses to extreme violence and abuse.

Our Western Fraternal Life Association Lodge 236 members have done community services for decades and plan to expand volunteer efforts. One effort began six decades ago and will continue for decades into the future. One purpose is to remind present and future generations of historical events so that, hopefully, we will work to prevent them from occurring again. Another purpose is to honor veterans who have served, and sometimes died, to keep such tragic events from recurring.

I'm a member of a couple of Tucson, Arizona groups that bring the barn-raising model to community greening projects. The first is a homeowners’ co-op that is part of the Watershed Management Group.
Members are required to work a certain number of hours before they can host a water harvesting workshop on their property. It’s 16 hours for an earthworks workshop and 32 hours for a cistern workshop.
I hosted an earthworks building project at my house last August. The co-op members were supervised by a WMG employee, and they built berms and basins.

Operation Homefront, military families and local volunteers teamed up to take part in the President’s call to service during the Baseball Hall of Fame induction weekend. On Saturday July 25, Operation Homefront hosted a project to prepare care packages for deployed service members and back-to-school backpacks for New York’s military children.